I studied history in college. Technically, I was an education major, but my heart was in history. I was idealistic—I was going to change lives teaching history, and I was going to present the past to students “as it really happened.” It wasn’t until my third year of college that I took historiography, and that is when I learned The Awful Truth. There is no “as it really happened.” This horrible realization left me disillusioned. I mourned the loss of history. I imagine a lot of history students go through the same shock. You learn you have dedicated your life to something that does not exist. The sad thing is that people expect historians to wrap the past in a neat box and present it to them without bias. This is literally impossible.
I should have taken that course my first year of college.
I adapted. I grew to enjoy historiography, enough that I pursued a master’s degree in it, but I still feel sad at having lost history. So I guess the moral of the story is to choose your major carefully, be skeptical of everything, and avoid The History Channel.
There was a decidely less nerdy bonus comic Monday, so be sure to go back if you missed it! And if you’d like to see a bonus comic at the end of this month, be sure to vote for KT on Top Web Comics.
Comments
Weird, but then so am I.
I'd like to get a Masters and PhD in something if I could ever figure out something worth getting one in - but seeing as I couldn't even decide upon a major in my undergrad years, that doesn't seem too likely to happen.
Do they offer advanced degrees in procrastination or indecisiveness?
-toddles off, brain broken- (Though i already betted on the bias of historians & the like. It's everywhere, really. Ahh well. ;;;; )
Yet, I still can't convince my Commerce/Engineer graduate brother that 'History' is more than memorising timelines. :\
Then you learn that there is no such thing as species. That was a bit of a brain breaker.
Physics gave me a shock. Yes, there are a lot of bizarre things you learn in physics, but the thing that disturbed me was learning that two objects can never actually touch. I'm a very tactile person, and this depressed me.
I love this comic sooo much! I don't know of any other comic where I can actually discuss history and not be thought of as weird. This has to be one of the smartest comics on the internet. *goes to vote*
You also have the problem of whether Pearl Harbor is important. Most people think it is (myself included), but this is entirely subjective. The fact it happened, the date when it happened... these may be of no consequence at all. That you have chosen that event to be important is historiography.
Why yes, I'm a medieval grad student, why do you ask? ;)
And I completely agree, we'll never have a 100% accurate picture after a certain point but half the fun is in the discovery and the discussion. Though it is my personal mission in life to have Christopher Columbus's holiday revoked on the grounds that he was a murderer (::sings:: And he didn't discover America...). ;)
Where would the History Channel appear on this diagram? Probably as a splotch-shaped mark a couple of inches outside the green circle, right?